PixlBit

(Sing the title to the tune of the Beach Boys' song "Surf City"). My sessions began with a gathering of Game Pass rewards, my retro list, angst over Game Pass, and more 2007-9 retro. Here goes. 

Still Wakes the Deep: Played on Game Pass. A first-person narrative horror game that takes place on a oil rig off the Scottish coast. The subtitles can be a help with the heavy Scottish accents and slang, which I find very interesting. Graphics are mucho detailed and realistic looking. It's cool to see what an oil rig looks like and how people work and live on it. I'm played in little bursts as each achievement pops. I'm not actively trying for achievemnets so much. I'm enjoying the story and just hope they unlock as I go along. After my angst expressed below, however, I quit it. 

Super Mario Odyssey [cor. Galaxy]: I broke out the Wii for this. It's looks noticably lower resolution from the Switch version I played, but I still enjoyed it. I then got stuck on a puzzle and stopped.

I looked through my memory stick of saved games on my Wii and saw I still have a dozen or so stuff from the Wii Virtual Console store on there. Stuff like Art Style: Orbient, Swords & Soldiers plus some classics from TG16 and NES. I hope I get more use out of my Wii sometime soon. 

Bioshock Remastered: I'm on New Game Plus set to hard difficulty and vita chambers disabled. You keep everything from previous playthroughs which is making hard difficulty not as hard as I expected. I finished all the weapon upgrades, got all the tonics and health/eve upgrades, researched everything to max, and rescued all the Little Sisters. I'm still trying to find all the audio logs but there are so many of them, I may just not bother. I probably have 90% of them but even if I start using a guide it will be an arduous task. At one point I got a little frustrated with an elite Big Daddy fight and stopped to try the next on my list. 

Uncharted 2 Remastered: I played this on my PS4. The whole trilogy came with my system purchased years ago. I played Uncharted 2 until the first major stealth challenge in the art museum. This part always annoys me. I got stuck in it, as usual, and had no patience for it. I've cleared it before (and the whole game) but this time I didn't want to do it. 

Halo 3: I played this within the Master Chief Collection on Game Pass. I played through maybe half of the story and then looked at achievements. I went after several par times on levels and got one of them. Then I hunted skulls and on the sixth one got so annoyed trying to do a grenade aided jump that I stopped. I enjoyed some of the new additions to the series such as being able to unmount heavy weapons, use a flame thrower and mortar weapon, drive Mongoose ATVs and various new alien weapons. Fun!

Game Pass Price Rise: Half way through the week I saw the news about the prices changing for Game Pass Ultimate. That, another problem I had redeeming points, and the realization that I should be buying yearly and not monthly led me to put GPU on hold starting next month. I'm putting rewards point gathering aside and trying to decide if I should get a yearly membership code or not. I find it strange that I can't change my account to yearly on the console. What is with that?

God of War II: I set up my PS3 and played GOWII within the God of War Saga, which is a great collection because it includes the two PSP GOW games. GOWII is pretty fantastic. I loved the big epic battles against gigantic foes. I played for a while but when I returned the next day I was in the mood for something different. 

Fallout 3: The 360 version is on Game Pass right now. I've played it before but not for very long because I was always frustrated at how dangerous the world was and how weak you are at the beginning. This time, though, I persevered and got quite hooked on the game. Whenever I encountered foes that were ripping my health, I just backed off and went somewhere else and did a different quest.

I am deep into the research questline you get from the equipment store in Megaton. The finding-my-dad main story questline has been leading me into too much danger I can't handle yet. But I managed to progress it doing the research tasks somehow. I love how the storylines intertwine. It's amazing the way the world interconnects like that. It must've been incredibly difficult to pull that off technically. One fatal encounter too many, however, and I took a break to play the next on my list. 

Gears of War 2: I've done all the achivements I care to get way back in 2011, but I love the gameplay so much, I'm replaying it just to experience the story again and find new ways to play it. I love the Boltok pistol which creates huge squishy sound effect on a head-shot and using enemies as meat shields. I'd try and run through the whole game with a meat-shield but after a short time your character ends it with a neck twist. I'm curious why only the first Gears of War got the remaster treatment. I'd always assumed they did the first three but apparently not. I guess they got too busy with 4, 5, Tactics and upcomming 6 to get to it. But, Gears II still looks and plays great. It hasn't aged much at all even though it's been 15 years or so. 

Well, that's a week. I may start from the beginning of my list again next week, but I can't stop thinking about Fallout 3, so I may start there. We'll see. 

What's up? See anything you like?